Small businesses are often overwhelmed with software decisions. We all want to keep the expenses to a minimum yet so much time is spent keeping organized and managing administrative tasks. How do you choose which solution is right for you?

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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Choosing IT solutions based on your business' size

IT is a complex domain.
For a given problem, there'll always be a great number of solutions.
Each solution has its pros, its cons and an associated budget. The
choices to be made for a small business are far from obvious but
here's some advice on how to take in account your business reality to
your IT needs.

1- Don't base decisions
solely on past experience

I
often see small business decision makers suggest software or IT
systems based on their previous experiences in larger businesses.
Although a recommendation should not be ignored, its important to put
it in context.

One
of the most frequent examples is when choosing an Email system. Most
large businesses have their own IT systems on which they install
Microsoft Exchange. I'm not questioning the effectiveness of the
system but the cost and effort required to install and maintain it
for a small business. Not only do you need to have a server to
install it, but you need to back it up, to maintain it, etc. Although
it is a viable option, it is a lot more expensive and time consuming
than getting a solution like Google Apps.

Small businesses can
rarely afford the same tools as the big guys but the fact is, they
usually don't need them: not only are they more expensive but they're
also more complex and contain undesired functionality.

2- Start by optimizing
the value-added departments

Every business must manage
different departments: sales, marketing, accounting, operations, etc.
Ideally, each department would be managed with the best IT systems
available for the business size. Unfortunately, the reality is small
businesses can't necessarily afford them all at once. In such
situations, the business should prioritize the department IT
migration based on the added value of the department in question.

For example, I usually
recommend small businesses to start by optimizing their sales IT
systems and software. Such systems can help businesses increase
their sales so that the new profits can be invested in other
departments systems. Another option is to improve the operations'
efficiency by appropriate software and hardware solutions. This will
allow the business to reduce their operations expenses and increase
their profits.

3- Evolve progressively
but quickly

Unless you have unlimited
funds, its often difficult to change the whole IT infrastructure at
once. As mentioned in the previous section, businesses should start
by optimizing the departments that will most benefit the company.
With these benefits, we can progressively improve the IT systems of
every department in the company.

This being said, its
important to note that you want to optimize your systems quicker
rather than slower. The reason is the IT system's migration is
usually harder as time goes by. Take for example an accounting
system: migrating 5 or 6 years of data is usually much more
complicated than 1. This being said there are more and more tools
that ease IT migration, but when these tools do not exist, the
migration can be quite expensive and time consuming.

A good small business
manager will know the strengths and weaknesses of its business. He
will also know his budget, financial status and overall reality. Most
managers will therefore be tempted, rightly so, to invest in new
technologies to improve the business' overall profitability and to
insure its growth. To do so, one must make sure to invest in
relevant tools in a progressive and efficient manner.